CRASSH

Russia on Edge: Reclaiming the Periphery in Contemporary Russian Culture

Conference Review

a) Summary Abstract

The workshop Russia on Edge: Reclaiming the Periphery in Contemporary Russian Culture was a 1.5-day international workshop hosted by CRASSH. It explored contemporary Russian culture from a transdisciplinary perspective. Central to the workshop was the shift in cultural focus transpiring in post-Soviet Russia, from Russia’s political centre to its geographical periphery. Speakers and panels on a wide range of topics/disciplines – literature/language, fashion, ethnography, new media, political propaganda, contemporary art, gay culture, and contemporary film – critically examined traditional views of centre and periphery. They argued that (1) in post-Soviet space, major cultural figures increasingly emerge beyond major urban centres and mainstream culture, and that (2) visions of centrifugal power sources and competing centres are pivotal to the work of these cultural icons. In addition to the panel sessions, the participants addressed these cultural shifts in informal discussions – during lunch/breaks/drinks and a dinner at Trinity College – and during the round table session which concluded the workshop.

b) Conference Review

Aims:
The workshop sought to address a common research focus that emerged in the course of a seminar series hosted by Cambridge’s Study Group on Contemporary Russian Culture, which met at CRASSH biweekly from Michaelmas 2007 through to Easter Term 2009. At that seminar series, speakers and panels discussing a diverse range of topics and disciplines – architecture, fashion, voting patterns, ethnography, political propaganda, literature/language, gay culture, contemporary film – demonstrated the existence of a shift in cultural focus from Russia’s political centre to its spatial and social periphery.

In the Russia on Edge workshop, the organizers aimed to co-ordinate approaches to this shift – and to the theme of ‘reclaiming the periphery.’ Panelists were asked to present new research within this framework, and to share it with experts from other disciplines in order to transcend disciplinary boundaries and produce a more panoramic overview of cultural production and consumption in post-Soviet Russia.

In addition, by bringing together former seminar speakers while also inviting relevant new speakers the organizers sought (a) to consolidate the community of scholars that formed during the seminar series; and (b) to expand the network of scholars working on ‘cultures of the margins’ in Russia. With the latter goal in mind, the event was co-ordinated with the similarly-themed Cultures of the Margins workshop organized by Professor Hilary Pilkington on 12-13th December 2009, at the University of Warwick. Speakers were encouraged to participate in both events – an invitation that three speakers took up – and the programmes of both were adjusted in light of that goal.

Intellectual content:
Historically, Russian power structures have been highly centralized and contemporary commentators often assume that political power and cultural momentum are located in the nation’s capital, Moscow. As a result, historical and cultural analyses of Russia have tended to overemphasize the nation’s centre. This view also informs international policy-making decisions.

Cumulatively, the seminar series of the Contemporary Russian Cultural Studies Group suggested that this conventional view is misleading. It suggested that contemporary Russian culture is marked by new configurations of centre and periphery – configurations that have been explored outside of Russia by such groundbreaking scholars as Gayatri Spivak (the marginal centre), Homi Bhabha (cultural hybridity), and Nancy Fraser (transnationality). The workshop Russia on Edge was set up in order to explore these new configurations in post-Soviet Russia. Rather than focusing on speakers’ previous contributions to the seminar series, it was conceived as an opportunity to develop new, transdisciplinary approaches to a common theme: cultural projects and hierarchies of space in a global context.

Points raised:
The workshop sparked vivid discussion on a number of problems linked to the themes at hand. It evoked considerations of issues of social marginality: for example, that of canonical cultural figures whose homosexuality is consistently concealed in mainstream cultural history. And it led to discussions of how classic ‘peripheral views’ of Russia – as a margin in relation to a culturally important centre located in Western Europe or the US – invite localized resistance. Participants investigated how the geopolitical disposition of the Siberian managerial elite has affected political activity, and whether the concept of “life-style” was a more fruitful alternative to centre-periphery oppositions.

In the round table that concluded the conference, participants pondered the question of whether for contemporary Russia, the very existence of such dichotomies as centre versus periphery and core versus margin are still topical and desirable, or whether these binary oppositions are becoming obsolete. Is it, for instance, today still viable to consider Siberia as ‘more peripheral’ than Moscow, and if so, in what sense – geographically, culturally, or politically? Or is a more flexible approach to divisions of centre and periphery required? And if so, how does one translate that approach into effective analytical tools?

Plans for follow-up events and publications:
The above and other questions raised at the conference will be re-addressed in a publication that will incorporate the conference proceedings. Two of the conference organizers – Dr Muireann Maguire and Ms Vanessa Rampton – are currently preparing a publication of a selection of papers in a peer-reviewed academic journal or in the form of a book publication.

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